Flagellation ritual exposes Filipinos to rabies

More than a hundred men in the Philippines may have contracted rabies after taking part in a self-flagellation ritual to mark Good Friday, doctors and local authorities said on Thursday.

A health alert was issued after a man who took part in the traditional ceremony – where participants slash their backs with knifes before flaying themselves with bamboo whips – died from the virus on 11 April.

Mario Morales, the mayor of Mabalacat in Pampanga province north of Manila, told local media that Eduardo Sese may have contaminated up to 100 people who shared knives to cut themselves. He was bitten by an infected dog in February 2007.

The government doctor in Pampanga, Maria Clara Aquino, said vaccines had been given to 103 people who could have been exposed.

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Atoning for sins

Self-flagellation is an annual tradition in Pampanga and other parts of the Philippines in which men whip themselves into a frenzy on Good Friday to atone for their sins.

Rabies is a viral disease that infects domestic and wild animals. It is transmitted to humans through close contact with saliva from infected animals, from example through bites, scratches or licks on broken skin.

Treatment does exist in the form of antibodies to the disease followed by a vaccine to stimulate more antibody production, but it must be administered within hours of infection. Once symptoms of the disease develop, rabies is fatal in both animals and humans. Death can occur within seven days of infection.

A World Health Organization study in 2004 estimated that up to 55,000 people, mostly in rural areas of Africa and Asia, die each year from rabies.